In that dreadful war where atrocities were committed by both sides, it is good to remember that 'history is written by the victors', and the Germans frequently showed more humanity than the British (and I write this as someone who is proud to be English!).

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Researching my forthcoming biography of Princess Alice, I came across some
interesting and rather sad accounts of the ‘Laying-In Hospitals’, ostensibly
founded to combat the high infant mortality rates and deaths in childbirth in
the 19th century. In fact, many of these places were founded to enable medics to
further their research into obstetrics and particularly to practise using
forceps, using their patients as guinea pigs. Unfortunately but
unsurprisingly, due to their unhygienic practices, puerperal fever spread
rapidly and the number of women dying in childbirth significantly increased with
the founding of laying-in hospitals, while mothers who remained at home to give
birth, rarely contracted the fever, which had throughout the ages killed off so
many wealthy women who could afford medical treatment that it had become known
as ‘the doctors’ plague’.

In the late 1920s my grandmother contracted puerperal fever and, as she lay
in her hospital bed, she heard the doctors at the other side of the
curtains discussing her treatment. Somehow the infection had affected her legs
and the doctors decided that the only solution was a double amputation, which,
naturally came as a terrible shock to my grandmother. Being a woman of some
spirit, she refused to accept this solution and, as soon as the doctors
had gone, she jumped out of bed and ran home! The illness was horrific.
All her hair fell out and her life was seriously in danger until a wise old
neighbour with no medical training whatsoever told her to eat nothing
but carrots and apples – which is exactly what she did for several weeks (or
possibly months). “Bags full of apples and carrots!” she said. Her hair grew
back more beautifully than ever, and she lived for a further seventy years
(dying at the age of 98) walking about quite happily on both legs and relieved
that she hadn’t accepted the advice of the doctors.

Very recently, I heard of a woman who refused all medical treatment for
breast cancer but cured herself completely by avoiding dairy and eating carrots
and apples. Chopping off body parts or zapping with dangerous chemicals might be
one way to deal with health issues but perhaps it is worth remembering that
there might also be far simpler and more effective and gentle solutions to many
of the conditions that afflict so many people today. Nature is filled with
antidotes, just as dock leaves grow next to nettles (but these natural antidotes provide little
profit for pharmaceutical companies, which thrive on illness, unless, of course, they intervene by
genetically modifying crops), and, in the overall scheme of things, it seems the natural world is designed to help us to thrive...